On The Importance Of Dancing With Beginners

On doing some dance reading around the ‘net, I came across this brief article randomly and really loved it. It is about ballroom dancing/partner dancing, but was so absolutely true for Tribal Group Improv/ATS I bookmarked it for later reference. Thought I would share it with you here!

“On The Importance Of Dancing With BeginnersWhile there is no question that dancing with a better partner will make you *look* good, and that with such a partner you can concentrate more on styling details and so on because the lead and follow doesn’t need so much attention, it is not the best way to practice lead/follow skills. If learning leaders only dance with accomplished followers and vice-versa, they won’t develop great leading/following skills, because they won’t *need* to. Now let’s suppose that YOU are a great leader or follower. What happens if you dance only with other great dancers? Your lead and follow skills will gradually *deteriorate* — because you’re not working them very hard. After some months without exposure to beginners, you may be surprised to find that you can’t dance with them very well, even though they seem to do okay with other beginners.

You learn how to dance better by dancing with more experienced partners. But you learn how to lead/follow better by dancing with less experienced partners. Your skills are put much more to the test dancing with a beginner than with an experienced dancer. It is easy to lead/follow a great dancer. All your weaknesses as a leader/follower show up with beginners. Dance with them and ask yourself why each incorrectly led/followed figure didn’t work and when you figure it out, work on incorporating the fixes into all your dancing!

You cannot become a good dancer by dancing _only_ with the same person. Dancing only with each other, you will become good at dancing with each other with all the mistakes and bad habits that become “correct” for you.

There is a certain type of character (leader) that one encounters again and again if one has been dancing for any length of time: the guy who only wants to dance with the best followers because he believes they are the only partners who can match his high skill level. Often what is REALLY going on is that only the best followers can compensate for his mistakes or idiosyncrasies. They make him look good. But the guy continues to think he’s the tops because he insulates himself from feedback. *Dancing with poor to average followers is a good reality check.* If none but the best can follow your leads, I respectfully suggest your leads could use some work.Also, that kind of thinking ultimately harms their dancing. I’ve seen guys overestimate their ability and abandon the study of technique FAR too soon. Consequently it will take them a lot longer to reach the next level of skill.

(This file is part of the lead/follow FAQ list. These are articles compiled from the newsgroup rec.arts.dance by Mark Balzer.)

(You may link to this page and make copies for private use in any form, but reproduction in any means, including book or CDROM, is not allowed without permission.

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Shay Moore is the director and primary instructor at Deep Roots Dance in Seattle, WA. She loves writing, movies, costuming, knitting, cooking, and bellydance to the moon and back again; and loves her amazing husband and doggies even more than that.

Glad you like it Amy. This is why in class sometimes I am yelling out “Grab a partner…one you have never danced with or dont’ dance with often!” It has the double duty of getting the class more connected (no cliques allowed!) as well as improving everyone’s lead/follow skills.

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Sharon is rad. Sharon is an outstanding instructor and director with an incredible gift for sharing her knowledge, experience and philosophy with others. Her creative style of teaching makes learning tribal fun and accessible; I had no dance background before I started dancing with Sharon but she explains things in a way that anyone can catch on to, and she’ll explain it over and over in different…
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Wildflower
- Seattle, WA (TeachStreet)

I studied Tribal Fusion bellydance with Frederique in Oakland before moving to Seattle, and I was desperately missing getting my shimmy on. I’ll be honest, I first took Shay’s class at the Phinney Neighborhood Center because it was close to my house and she answered my email, but boy howdy did I get lucky.
Shay is a great dancer, but what is more important to this review is that she is…
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Alysha N.
- Seattle, WA

Before finding Deep Roots, I tried belly dancing with a few different teachers and studios. My first experience in belly dancing left me mostly uninspired to move forward with the art form. A few years later I decided to pick it up again and while that teacher was a beautiful dancer, she didn’t actually give instruction on how you could become a beautiful dancer. Staring at yourself in a mirror…
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Fullerene B.

Excellent Teacher With Awesome Hair I’ve been dancing with Sharon since 2002 or so and can’t say enough good things about her tribal classes: the solid foundation in dance basics and the dedication to breaking steps down in a comprehensible and meaningful way were what caught me–in that I felt like I was actually building a skill set as opposed to just swanning around in a coin…
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Chiara
- (TeachStreet)

Your workshops were the best I took at 3rd Coast this year. I really enjoyed your style of teaching, and I really felt that “conversation” element you mentioned at the beginning of each workshop. I am often so intimidated by instructors that I ask very few questions during a workshop, but you created such a positive and warm environment that asking questions seemed like a natural extension of the lesson. And you added something I haven’t seen in a…
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